WND EXCLUSIVE

Turkey links assassin to Obama-protected imam

Sources connect killer of Russian ambassador to activist in Pennsylvania

Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., is a WND senior staff writer. He has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y. Times best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command." Corsi's latest book is "Partners in Crime."

NEW YORK – Turkish government intelligence has determined Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22 – the police officer who recently assassinated Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov while the ambassador was giving a speech to open an art gallery in Ankara – was a member of the Gulen organization, which claimed to be the same group that staged an unsuccessful coup in Turkey in July.

WND reported Nov. 3 the Clinton Foundation was engaged in a pay-to-play scheme to obtain Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s support for the Obama administration decision to give asylum to Fetullah Gulen, a Turkish Muslim imam the Erdogan government holds responsible for the attempted coup July 15.

He’s now living in Saylorsborg, Pennsylvania.

Trusted sources close to the Turkish government have explained to WND on the condition of anonymity that assassin Mert Altintas, born in 1994, joined the police in Turkey in 2012 and graduated in 2014, when Gulen’s organization, known in Turkey as the Fetullah Terrorist Organization, or FETO, was at the peak of its power in Turkey.

Assassin’s links

Turkish intelligence and police units investigating the assassination of Ambassador Karlov have now established that Mevlut Mert Altintas was deeply connected with Gulen’s group.

Evidence for that conclusion includes several books found at Altintas’ residence authored by Gulen, as well as discovering that Altintas’ sister had shared on Internet social media various FETO-supporting posts urging violent terrorist attacks in Turkey and elsewhere.

Altintas was living in an apartment in Ankara that police have established is owned by another fugitive FETO member, Abdullah Bozkurt, the Ankara representative of the FETO group’s English-language propaganda newspaper “Today’s Zaman,” translated as “Today’s Time,” published daily in Turkey.

Turkish authorities are currently attempting to unlock Altintas’ cell phone to gain access to messages and contact lists. They want to know any further connections into Turkey’s police, military, educational institutions and justice system.

Turkish police interrogating Altintas’ classmates at the police academy have learned the assassin regularly attended meetings in FETO safe houses in Turkey, as well as attending “Körfez Dershanesi,” a notorious network of secondary schools that the FETO terrorist organization uses to brainwash recruits and radicalize militants.

Turkish government authorities have also documented that prior to the assassination, Altintas was under investigation by the Istanbul Department of Chief Public Prosecution as a suspect for stealing questions to the Turkish government’s “Public Service Entry” exam. The Gulen organization repeatedly has stolen these exam questions and given them to their members before the exam so that they could easily infiltrate into the government staff in Turkey.

Turkish authorities investigating Altintas also revealed Altintas’ connections with the Gulen terrorist organization go so deep as to include those references that first recommended Altintas as a recruit to the Turkish Police Department.

Turkish government authorities reveal they have taken action against those who provided recommendations for Altintas after concluding FETO terrorists sought to plant Altintas as a fellow terrorist secretly within the ranks of the Turkish Police Department.

Assassin’s cell phone called key

Government investigators in Turkey have established Altintas used an encrypted telephone phone application known as “ByLock,” a messaging application believed to generate a private security key for each device used by FETO members to remain anonymous while communicating with others in the FETO underground network.

Altintas took a sick day on the day of the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey, leading Turkish intelligence authorities to suspect Altintas participated in the coup tempt alongside the putschists trying to topple the government of President Erdogan, though the role he played is not yet clear.

Turkish investigators, working in conjunction with their Russian counterparts, found the assassin maintained four different levels of security protection in his cell phone and have have begun to develop intelligence concerning Altintas’ whereabouts during the July 15 coup.

By cracking the ByLock encryption on Altintas’ cell phone, investigators said they found that Altintas was in the city of Erbil in Iraq while the coup attempt developed.

While violence was developing for Turkey at that time, “Altintas’ cell phone was giving out a signal within a very close proximity of Erbil government palace and the CIA’s office in Erbil, home of the Kurdish regional government in Iraq and the staging ground for ISIS activity in the area.”

But in the week following the July 15 coup attempt, the cell phone’s signal was cut off, resuming again only after Altintas began using his phone again upon his return to Ankara.

Turkish security experts now believe Altintas represents a new generation of assassins that have managed to infiltrate themselves into trusted government positions, ready to become operational assassins on call, capable of killing on demand, without any evident concern for their ability to escape.

In killing Ambassador Karlov, Altintas used a Turkish-style Canik55 TP9SA, 9×19 mm pistol, with varying capacities of a 15-plus-1 round magazine, an 18-plus-1 round magazine, and a 20-plus-1 magazine. Similar to a Glock semi-automatic pistol, the Canik55 is a high-performance, lethal weapon, generally only available in Turkey to authorized police officers.

Obama stonewalls

The intelligence tying him to the Gulen group has intensified the determination of the Turkish government to get the U.S. government to extradite Fetullah Gulen from Pennsylvania.

Since his self-imposed exile to the United States in 1999, Gulen has operated what Turkey has characterized as the Fetullah Terrorist Organization under the guise of providing educational services.

The Erdogan government has charged that a group within the Turkish army associated with FETO launched the coup attempt in Turkey on July 15 that resulted in the deaths of more than 250 people, plus the injury of another 2,500. In the course of the July 15 coup, two F-16 fighter jets under the control of Turkish military loyal to FETO bombed the presidential palace in Ankara.

“Under their deviant religious ideology, FETO considers it legitimate to engage in all kinds of self-defensive deception, conspiracy, trap and illegal activities to achieve its objectives,” states a 2016 bulletin prepared by Turkey’s government-run press service, the Anadolu Agency, titled “FETO’s Coup Attempt in Turkey.”

“With years of confidential training and dissuasion activities, members of the terrorist organization have gained a level of professionalism beyond the comprehension of ordinary people,” the bulletin continues. “Its members operate with a radical ‘devotion’ and see themselves as the ‘chosen ones’; they switch identities and commit all types of illegal acts, including murder if need be.”

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim warned in July there “could even be a questioning of our friendship” if the U.S. doesn’t hand over Gulen.

Also, military intelligence sources in Turkey continue to tell WND that Obama administration officials have consistently “looked the other way” regarding terrorism in Turkey, refusing to budge on Turkey’s requests to extradite Gulen.

Turkey is optimistic the incoming Trump administration will take a more constructive approach to the continuing requests by the Erdogan government to assist Turkey in combating terrorism.

One of the biggest donors is Gulen lieutenant Gokhan Ozkok, who is listed on the Turkish Cultural Center’s website as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative.

Ozkok gave between $500,001 and $1 million to the Clinton Foundation in 2015.

The Podesta Group, managed by John Podesta’s brother Tony Podesta, filed a lobbying registration form effective May 12, 2016, disclosing the group had been hired by the Alliance for Shared Values in New York, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that operates as an umbrella organization for various Gulen-affiliated organizations in the United States, including the Rumi Forum.